As the clock indicated 5:30 PM on 30th November, the day when polling in Telangana took place, over a dozen news platforms came up with exit polls predicting the outcome of Assembly elections in five states - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Mizoram.
It is pertinent to mention that the Election Commission of India had revised its guidelines and allowed the exit polls to be made public at 5:30 PM instead of the earlier prescribed time of 6:30 PM.
Most of the exit polls suggest Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinching a clear majority in Rajasthan, a close contest between the BJP and the Congress Party in Madhya Pradesh, a clear majority for the Congress Party in Chhattisgarh, a tough fight between the Congress and the incumbent Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) with a few polls giving an edge to the Congress Party, and a neck to neck tussle between the Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) and the Mizo National Front (MNF).
A few might confuse between opinion polls and exit polls, with a few using these terms interchangeably. An opinion poll is a predictive survey done before elections to get an idea of people’s moods and make predictions about voters’ preferred choices for scheduled elections. While an exit poll is a post-poll survey conducted soon after the people cast their respective votes.
Collectively, these predictive polls have fetched mixed results in the past few years in Indian elections, leading to an equally mixed reputation that they enjoy amongst the people.
A few most recent exit polls where most of the survey agencies or news channel-survey agency combines missed the shot include the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections where the BJP was shown getting a little edge over the AITC; the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections where a few big agencies predicted win for the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan; 2017 UP elections where BJP was projected to win around just 200 odd seats; 2015 Bihar elections forecasting the JDU-RJD Mahagathbandhan to emerge victorious, and so on and so forth.
Further, during the 2014 and 2019 General Elections, most of the agencies failed to gauge the magnitude of the success of the BJP and the party getting a clear majority on its own. However, the biggest shock to psephologists and pollsters came after the falling through of 2004 exit poll predictions, which had forecasted a victory for the NDA alliance, with most of them giving the alliance 230 to 275 seats. However, riding on the wave of ‘India Shining’, the alliance faced massive defeat by the UPA alliance.
Back then, prediction polls were at the stage of formalisation with multiple new players getting into the domain. As far as the history of predicting polls is concerned, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) emerged as the first organisations to get into this business in the 1960s. This was followed by a few psephologists and journalists conducting predictive polls in the 1980s. The following time witnessed many amateur psephologists hailing majorly from academia and non-profit orgnisations.
However, India is not the exclusive case, and prediction polls across the world have witnessed the same fate. In the US, the political pundits went horribly wrong in predicting the 2020 US Presidential Elections. The failure went to such a degree that “Politico” termed the polling industry in the US to be “a wreck, and should be blown up.”
On the contrary, in democracies like the UK, the exit polls have shown a successful track record by largely coming up with back-to-back successful predictions which are quite near to the eventual outcomes.
Seeing the possibility of exit polls influencing the choice of voters, the Union Government accepted the Election Commission of India’s request to add Section 126A to the Representation of the People Act, 1950. The Section placed limitations on publication/broadcast of exit polls and said, “no person shall conduct any exit poll and publish or publicise by means of the print or electronic media... the result of any exit poll during such a period... In case of a general election, the period may commence from the beginning of the hours fixed for the poll on the first day of poll and continue till half an hour after closing of the poll in all the states and union territories.”
Though the exit polls in India have had a chequered reputation, their popularity can not be disregarded, often witnessed in raised TRPs of channels and increased viewership of online platforms. There is no iota of doubt about their success in elevating the excitement and inquisitiveness of Indian minds.
We also need to consider the fact that voters now have become more adaptive to information and are keen to make informed decisions while electioneering. According to a few pollsters, there is also a possibility that at times, besides errors in sampling and hiccups in surveying, a few surveyees might astroturf their opinions and willingly try to deflect the findings of the prediction polls.
No one knows what the future holds and the fate of netas and parties in five states would largely come out till mid-day of 3rd December. On the future of recently concluded elections in five states, one might like to quote prominent author George Leonard, who once said, “Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.
Follow us
